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"For Lorraine Hansberry, 'A Raisin in the Sun' Was Just the Start"

I think, then, that Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent. That they must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities.

"Hansberry experimented with a variety of forms, which includes the essay, long-form fiction, and short stories as well being a visual artist and a painter," said Imani Perry, author of the forthcoming Looking for Lorraine: A Life of Lorraine Hansberry and a professor of African-American studies at Princeton. "And she was also fairly ecumenical in terms of her political activism." Hansberry was concerned with racial justice, colonialism and feminism; she joined the Communist Party and led the Young Progressives group at the University of Wisconsin in 1948.

“For Hansberry, however, art was not simply an expression of her civil rights concerns but also a space where she could wage racial and gender battles and find resolutions that were more liberating than the law.”

Image Information:

Lorraine Hansberry was the first African-American woman to have a play produced on Broadway, with “A Raisin in the Sun.” Here, Lorraine leans over her typewriter at her Greenwich Village apartment on Bleecker Street during an April 1959 photo shoot for Vogue. Photo by David Attie.